Instant lottery tickets (e.g., “scratch-off” lottery tickets) are sold at many types of retail locations including, stores, such as grocery stores, general merchandise stores, and the like. Various configurations of lottery ticket dispensers have been proposed in the industry for this purpose, including electronic dispensers that automatically dispense a ticket from a bin or compartment upon receipt of an electronic command signal.
The typical scratch-off lottery tickets are delivered to retail establishments in the form of an interconnected strip in a fan-fold or rolled configuration, wherein perforation lines define individual tickets. In this regard, the individual dispensing bins must be equipped with a mechanism for separating the tickets in a reliable and repeatable manner. Failure of the final ticket separation process can be costly. For example, if the dispenser does not separate a ticket exactly along the perforation, the ticket may be “unsellable” or information needed for verification can be separated from the ticket and lost.
Various ticket separation devices are known or have been proposed in the industry. For example, U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2004/0000572 describes a lottery ticket dispenser that utilizes a separator shaft having helical blades mounted thereon. The separator shaft is driven by a motor and is adjacent the infeed drive rollers in the drive mechanism for separating the lottery tickets along their perforation line.
The use of a tear bar situated adjacent to a dispensing slot in the bin is also known as a cost-effective and relatively simple separation mechanism. However, the conventional tear bar configuration can be problematic when a ticket dispenser array includes a relatively large matrix of individual bins, for example an array with bins stacked four or five high. Depending on a height location of the array in a retail establishment, the retail clerk may need to reach upwards for grasping and detaching tickets from the upper bins, or may need to reach downwards to grasp and detach tickets from the lower bins. With known tear bar a configuration, a single tear bar is provided adjacent to the dispensing slot. If this single tear bar is located at the upper side (“upper lip”) of the dispensing slot, it becomes ineffective if the clerk must reach up and apply a downward force to separate the ticket along its perforation line. In this situation, because the tear bar is essentially not used, the clerk must be careful and hope that the ticket separates along the perforation line with the downward pulling force without tearing the ticket or pulling subsequent tickets from the dispenser. Likewise, if the single tear bar is located at the lower lip of the dispensing slot, it is ineffective if the clerk must reach down and apply an upward force to separate the ticket along its perforation line. Again, the clerk must hope that the ticket will not tear or cause other tickets to be pulled from the dispenser.
The present invention provides an improvement to tear bar configurations in lottery ticket dispensers that addresses the above problem.